Chapter V: Part 5

"My son, these are approximately the reasons for the respect which fathers give their children. I know I have leaned to the children's side more than justice asks and that I have argued in their favour a little against my conscience. But I desired to correct that insolent pride with which fathers insult over the weakness of their offspring, and therefore I was obliged to act like those who straighten a crooked tree; they pull it to the other side so that between the two twistings it grows straight again. In the same way I have made the fathers pay that tyrannical deference they had usurped from others and I took from them much which is due them, so that hereafter they should be content with what they really deserve. I know my apology will have shocked all old men, but let them remember that they were sons before they were fathers and that I must have spoken to their advantage too, since they were not found under a gooseberry bush. But whatever happens, even if my enemies attack me, I shall be safe because I have served all men and injured only half of them."

With these words he ceased speaking and our host's son began as follows:

"Permit me", said he, "since by your care I am informed of the Origin, History, Customs and Philosophy of this little man's world, to add something to what you have said and to prove that children are under no obligation to their fathers for being begotten because their fathers were conscientiously obliged to beget them.

"The narrowest Philosophy of their world admits that it is more desirable to die than not to have been, because one must have lived in order to die. Well, if I do not give being to this nothing, I place it in a worse state than death, and in not producing it I am more guilty than if I killed it. You would think, my little man, you had committed an unpardonable parricide if you had throttled your son. Truly, it would be an enormity; however it is more execrable not to give being to that which could receive it, for the child you deprive of light has nevertheless had the satisfaction of enjoying it a certain time. Moreover we know that it is only deprived of light for a few centuries; but there are forty poor little nothings, which you might make into forty good soldiers for your King, and you maliciously prevent them from seeing the daylight, letting them grow corrupt in your loins at the risk of being stifled by an apoplexy.

"Do not answer me with panegyrics of virginity. This virtue is only a smoke, for all the respect with which it is commonly idolised is, even among you, merely an advice, not to kill, but to refrain from making, one's son; and hence to make him more unfortunate than a dead man. It is a commandment; but since in the world whence you come chastity is considered so preferable to carnal propagation I marvel that God did not cause you to be born like mushrooms from the dew of May, or, at least, like crocodiles from thick mud heated by the sun. Yet it is only by accident that He sends eunuchs among you and He does not tear the genitals from your monks, your priests or your cardinals. You will say these were bestowed on them by Nature. Yes, but He is Nature's Master and if He had recognised that this piece was harmful to their salvation He would have ordered them to cut it off, as by the old law He commanded the Jews to cut off their foreskins. But these fancies are too ridiculous. On your honour, is there any part of your body more sacred or more profane than another? Why should I be a sin when I touch my centre-piece and not when I touch my ear or my heel? Is it because there is a tickling sensation? Why then I should not purge myself in the privy, for that cannot be done without some sort of pleasure; and pious men should not raise themselves to the contemplation of God, since thereby they enjoy a great pleasure in the imagination. Truly, seeing how much the religion of your country is contrary to Nature and how jealous it is of man's enjoyments, I am surprised your priests have not made it a crime to scratch oneself, on account of the agreeable sensation one feels from it. On the other hand I have noticed that far-seeing Nature has made all great, valiant and witty persons lean towards the delicate pleasures of love, as, for example, Samson, David, Hercules, Caesar, Hannibal and Charlemagne. Was this done for them to reap this organ of pleasure with a blow from a sickle? Alas, even in a tub Nature found out and debauched Diogenes, thin, ugly, and lousy; and forced him to make the breath that cooled his carrots into sighs for Lais. Doubtless Nature acted in this way for fear lest honest men should cease in the world. Let us conclude from this that your father was conscientiously obliged to set you free to the light and, when he imagines you are greatly obliged to him for his having made you by tickling himself, he actually has only given you what an ordinary bull gives his calves ten times every day for his amusement."

"You are wrong", interrupted my demon, "to try to regulate God's wisdom. It is true that He has forbidden us excess in this pleasure, but how do you know that He has not so willed it in order that the difficulties we find in compassing this passion may fit us for the glory He is preparing for us? How do you know that it was not to sharpen appetite by forbidding it? How do you know that He did not foresee that if youth gave itself up to the impetuosities of the flesh, too frequent enjoyment would enfeeble their seed and bring about the end of the world at the grandsons of the first man? How do you know He did not wish to prevent too many hungry generations from finding the fertility of the earth insufficient for their needs? Finally, how do you know He has not willed to act against all appearance of reason in order to reward fully those who have believed in His word against all appearance of reason?"

It seemed to me that this reply did not satisfy our young host, for he shook his head two or three times; but our mutual instructor was silent, because the meal was about to be carried in. We stretched ourselves out upon very soft mattresses covered with wide embroideries, where the vapours came to us as they had done before at the inn. A young servant took the elder of our two philosophers and led him into another little room. "Come back to us here", cried my instructor, "as soon as you have eaten." He promised to do so.

This fantasy of eating alone gave me the curiosity to ask the reason.

"He does not taste", said he, "the odour of meat or even of herbs unless they have died naturally, because he thinks them capable of pain."

"I am not greatly surprised", I replied, "that he should abstain from flesh and everything which has a sensitive life. In our world the Pythagoreans and even certain holy Anchorites observed this regime. But it seems to me altogether ridiculous not to cut a cabbage, for example, for fear of hurting it."

"For my part", replied my demon, "I see a good deal of probability in his opinion. Is not the cabbage you speak of as much a creation of God as yourself? Have you not both equally God and want for father and mother? Has not God's intellect been occupied from all eternity with its birth as well as yours? Moreover it seems He has provided more necessarily for the birth of vegetable than of reasonable life, since He has committed the generation of man to the caprice of his father, who can beget or not beget at his pleasure. But God has not treated the cabbage with such rigour, for He seems to have been more concerned lest the race of cabbages should perish than the race of men, and instead of permitting the father the option of begetting the son He forces them willy-nilly to give birth to others. And while men can at most beget a score in their lifetime, cabbages produce four hundred thousand a head. And to say that God loves man more than a cabbage is to tickle ourselves to make ourselves laugh; He is incapable of passion and therefore cannot love or hate anybody; and if He were capable of love He would rather feel tenderness for the cabbage you are holding (which cannot offend Him) than for a man when He already has before His eyes the wrongs the man is fated to commit. Add to this that a man cannot be born without sin, for he is a part of the first man who rendered him guilty, but we know very well that the first cabbage did not offend its Creator in the Earthly Paradise. Will it be said that we are made in the image of the Sovereign Being and that cabbages are not? Suppose that were true, by polluting in ourselves the soul whereby we resembled Him we have effaced the resemblance, for nothing is more contrary to God than sin. Then if our soul is no longer His portrait, we no more resemble Him through our hands, our feet, our mouth, our forehead and ears than a cabbage through its leaves, its flowers, its stalk, its heart and its head. If this poor plant could speak when you cut it do you not think it would say:

"'Man, my dear brother, what have I done to you to merit death? I grow only in your gardens, I am never found in wild places where I should live safely; I scorn to be the work of any hands but yours and I have scarcely left them when I lift myself from the ground to return to them. I spread out, I hold out my arms to you, I offer you the seeds my children, and to reward my courtesy you have my head cut off!'

"This is what a cabbage would say if it could express itself, and, because it cannot complain, does that mean that we have the right to do it all the ill it cannot prevent? If I find a wretch in fetters am I guiltless if I kill him, merely because he cannot defend himself? On the contrary, my cruelty is rendered worse by his weakness; however poor, however lacking in all advantages this hapless cabbage may be, it does not merit death on that account. What! Of all the goods of life it has none but that of vegetating and we deprive it of this? The sin of murdering a man is not so great as to cut a cabbage and to deprive it of life, because one day the man will live again while the cabbage has no other life to hope for. By killing a cabbage you annihilate its soul; but by killing a man you simply make him change his domicile. And I go further. Since God, the common Father of all things, cherishes equally all His works, is it not reasonable that He should have shared His benefits equally between us and plants? True, we were born first, but in God's family there is no right of primogeniture. If then cabbages did not share with us the fief of immortality, doubtless they received some other advantage, the briefness of whose existence is compensated for by its grandeur. This may be an universal intellect, a perfect knowledge of all things in their causes; for this reason it may be that the wise Contriver did not fashion them organs like ours, whose effect is only a simple, weak and often deceitful reasoning, but gave them organs that are stronger, more numerous and more skilfully elaborated to serve the purposes of their speculative conversations? Perhaps you will ask me why they have never communicated these great thoughts to us? But tell me, have you ever been taught by the Angels any more than by them? Since there is no proportion, no relation and no harmony between man's imbecile faculties and those of these divine creatures, these intellectual cabbages may try their best to make us understand the hidden cause of all miraculous events, we still lack senses capable of perceiving these fine points.

"Moses, the greatest of all philosophers, since according to what you say he gathered his knowledge of Nature from the source of Nature itself, indicated this truth when he spoke of the Tree of Knowledge. Under this enigma he wished to teach us that plants possess perfect philosophy. Remember then, O proudest of all animals, that although the cabbage you cut says not a word, it thinks none the less. The poor vegetable has no organs like ours to howl, to wriggle and to weep, but it has others to complain of the trick we play upon it, to draw down upon us the vengeance of Heaven. And if you ask me how I know that cabbages have these fine thoughts I ask you how you know that they do not have them? And how do you know that they do not say at night when they close up, in imitation of you: 'Master Curly-cabbage, I am your most humble servant, Savoy-Cabbage.'"

He was at this point of his discourse when the young man who had carried off our philosopher brought him back. "What! Already dined?" exclaimed my demon. He answered that he had, except for dessert, as the Physionome had permitted him to taste ours. Our young host did not wait for me to ask him the explanation of this mystery.

"I perceive", said he, "that this manner of living astonishes you. Know then that although health is regulated more carelessly in your world, the regime in this is not to be scorned. In every house there is a Physionome supported by the state who is approximately what would be called with you a doctor, except that he only treats healthy people and that he decides upon the different methods of treating us from the proportion, shape and symmetry of our limbs, from the features of the face, the colour of the flesh, the delicacy of the skin, the agility of the whole body, the sound of the voice, the complexion, the strength and hardness of the hair. Did you not notice just now a rather short man who gazed at you so long? He was the Physionome of this house. Be sure that he has varied the fumes of your dinner according to his observation of your appearance. Notice how far from our beds he placed the mattress for you to lie on. No doubt he decided your constitution was very different from ours, since he was afraid the odour which flows from these little taps under your nose should spread to us or that ours should smoke in your direction. To-night you will see he chooses the flowers for your bed with the same precautions."

While he was speaking I signed to my host to try to bring these philosophers on to speaking about some part of the science which they professed. He was too much my friend not to create an opportunity at once. I will not tell you the talk or the requests which were the ambassador to this treaty, the transition from the ridiculous to the serious was too imperceptible to be imitated. The last-comer of these doctors, after touching on other matters continued thus:

"It remains for me to prove to you that there are infinite worlds in an infinite world. Conceive, then, the Universe as a large animal, the stars (which are Worlds) as other animals within it, which in turn serve as worlds to other creatures, like ourselves, horses and elephants; in our turn we are also the worlds of certain yet smaller creatures, like boils, lice, worms, and mites. And these are the earth of other imperceptibles, just as we appear a great world to these little things. Perhaps our flesh, our blood and our vital principles are nothing but a texture of little animals holding together, lending us movement from their own and blindly allowing our will to drive them like a coachman, yet drive us too and all together produce that action we call life. Tell me, I beseech you, is it very hard to believe that a louse takes your body for a World, and that when one of them has travelled from one of your ears to the other, his companions should say of him that he has been to the ends of the world or that he has passed from one pole to the other? Yes, no doubt this little nation takes your hair for the forests of its country, the pores full of moisture for fountains, pimples for lakes and ponds, abscesses for seas, fluxions for deluges; and when you comb your hair backwards and forwards they take this movement for the ebb and flow of the ocean. Does not itching prove what I say? Is the mite which produces it anything but one of these little animals which has detached itself from civil society to set itself up as a tyrant in its country? If you ask me how it is that they are larger than other little imperceptibles, I ask you why elephants are larger than we are, and Irishmen than Spaniards? As to the breaking-out and the scabs, whose cause you do not know, they must happen either from the corruption of the bodies of enemies massacred by these little giants, or because the plague produced by the scarcity of food which these rebels have devoured has left heaps of bodies decaying in the country, or because the tyrant, having driven away from him his companions, whose bodies stopped up the pores of our body, has thus opened a passage to the moisture which has become corrupted by extravasation from the sphere of the circulation of our blood. Perhaps you will ask me why one mite produces a hundred others. That is not difficult to understand, for, as one revolt awakens another, so each of these little creatures, urged by the bad example of their rebellious companions, aspires to rule, and kindles everywhere war, slaughter and famine. But, you will say, some persons are much less subject to itch than others, yet each of us is equally filled with these animals if, as you declare, they make life. It is true, as we perceive, that phlegmatic subjects are less liable to the itch than those of a bilious temperament, because this people sympathises with the climate it inhabits and is more sluggish in a cold body than another which is heated by the temperature of its region, ferments, moves about and cannot remain in one place. Thus, a bilious man is more delicate than a phlegmatic, because he is stimulated in many more parts, and as the soul is only the action of these little beasts, he is able to feel in every place where these cattle are moving, while the phlegmatic is only hot enough to make them act in a few places. And to prove this universal mitedom you have only to consider how the blood flows to a gash when you are wounded. Your doctors say that it is guided by far-seeing Nature, who wishes to succour damaged parts. But this is chimerical. For there would have to be besides Soul and Spirit a third intellectual substance in us with its own functions and organs. It is much more probable that these little animals, feeling themselves attacked, send to their neighbours for help; they pour in from all sides: the country cannot contain so many people, and so they die stifled in the throng, or of hunger. This mortality happens when the abscess is ripe. To show that these animals of life are then extinguished, notice that corrupted flesh becomes insensible; and if cupping, which is ordered for the purpose of averting the fluxion, is successful, the reason is that these little animals have had heavy casualties in trying to close this opening, and therefore refuse to assist their allies, having only a mean strength to defend themselves."

He ceased speaking and when the second philosopher perceived our eyes were directed upon his and were urging him to speak in his turn, he said:

"Men, I see you are anxious to teach this little animal, who resembles us, something of the science we profess. I am at present dictating a treatise which I should be very glad to show him because of the light it throws upon the understanding of our physics. It is an explanation of the eternal origin of the world, but I am in a hurry to work my bellows; for to-morrow without fail the Town moves off. You will excuse me this time if I promise that as soon as the Town arrives at its destination, I will satisfy you."

At these words the host's son called for his father, and when he came the company asked him the time; the goodman answered that it was eight o'clock. His son then said in a rage:

"Hey! Come hither, varlet, did I not order you to warn us at seven? You know that the houses are going to-morrow, that the walls have already left, and yet your idleness even locks up your mouth."

"Sir", replied the goodman, "it has just been announced, while you were at table, that it is strictly forbidden to start until after to-morrow."

"No matter", replied he, lending him a buffet, "you should obey blindly, not try to understand my orders, but simply remember what I have bidden you. Quick, go and get your effigy."

When he had brought it, the young man seized it by the arm and whipped it for a long quarter of an hour.

"Now, rascal", he continued, "as a punishment for your disobedience you shall be a laughing stock to everybody for the rest of the day and so I order you to walk on two feet only all day."

The poor old man went out very mournfully and his son continued: "Gentlemen, I beseech you to excuse the rogueries of this hot-head. I hoped to make something good of him, but he takes advantage of my kindness. For my part I think the rogue will be the death of me; indeed on more than ten occasions I have been on the point of giving him my malediction."

Although I bit my lips I had great difficulty to keep myself from laughing at this world upside down. To break off this burlesque pedagogy, which no doubt would have made me burst forth in the end, I begged him to tell me what he meant by the journey of the Town he had just spoken of, whether the houses and the walls could move. He replied:

"My dear friend, our cities are divided into the mobile and the sedentary. The mobile, like that in which we are now, are constructed as follows: the architect builds each palace, as you see, of very light wood and inserts four wheels underneath it. In the thickness of one of the walls he places large and numerous bellows, whose nozzles pass in a horizontal line through the upper story from one gable to the other. When it is desired to move the town somewhere (for we change our air at every season), each one hangs out a number of large sails from one side of his house in front of the bellows; then he winds up a spring to make them play and in less than eight days the continuous blasts vomited by these windy monsters against the sails carry their houses, if they wish, more than a hundred leagues.

"The architecture of the second kind, which we call sedentary, is as follows: the houses are almost like your towers, except that they are made of wood and that in the middle they have a large strong screw which goes from the cellar to the roof to raise or lower them at will. Well, the earth underneath is hollowed out as deep as the building is high, and the whole thing is constructed in this manner so that when the frosts begin to fall cold from the sky, they can lower their houses to the bottom of the hole by turning them; and then they cover the tower and the hollow part about it with large skins and so shelter themselves from the inclemency of the air. But as soon as the soft breath of Spring makes the air milder, they return to the daylight by means of the large screw of which I spoke."

I think he wished to stop speaking there, but I began thus:

"Faith, sir, I should never have thought so expert a mason could be a philosopher, did I not have you as witness. For this reason, since we are not going to-day, you will have plenty of leisure to explain to us this eternal origin of the world with which you entertained us just now. In recompense, I promise you that as soon as I return to the Moon, whence my instructor"--I pointed to my demon--"will prove to you that I came, I will disseminate your fame by relating the fine things you tell me. I see that you laugh at this promise, because you do not believe the Moon is a world and still less that I am one of its inhabitants. But I can assure you that the people of that World take this one for a Moon and will laugh at me when I say their Moon is a World, that it has fields and inhabitants."

He only replied by a smile, and then he began to speak as follows:

"When we try to go back to the origin of this Great All we are forced to run into three or four absurdities, and so it is reasonable to take the path which makes us stumble least. The first obstacle that stops us is the Eternity of the World. Men's minds are not strong enough to conceive it and, because they are not able to imagine that so vast, so beautiful, so well regulated an Universe could have made itself, they take refuge in Creation. But, like one who plunges into a river for fear of being wet with rain, they run from the arms of a dwarf to the pity of a giant; and they do not even escape the difficulty, for they give to God the eternity they took from the world because they could not understand it. As if it were easier to imagine it in the one than in the other! This absurdity, then, or this giant of which I spoke, is Creation; for, tell me truly, has it ever been conceived how something could be made from nothing? Alas! There are such infinite differences between Nothing and one single atom that the acutest brain could not penetrate them. To escape this inexplicable labyrinth you must admit a Matter co-eternal with God, and then it is unnecessary to admit a God, since the World could have existed without Him. But, you will say, even if I grant you this Eternal Matter, how did this chaos become order of itself? Well, I shall explain it to you.

"My little Animal, after you have mentally separated each little visible body into an infinity of little invisible bodies, you are to imagine that the infinite Universe is composed of nothing but these infinite atoms which are very solid, very incorruptible, and very simple. Some are cubes, some parallelograms, some angular, some round, some pointed, some pyramidal, some hexagonal, some oval, and all act differently according to their shape. And to prove this, place a very round ivory ball upon a very smooth surface; and at the slightest movement you give it, it will be a half-quarter of an hour before it stops; to which I add that if it were as perfectly round as some of the atoms of which I speak, it would never stop. Then if art is capable of inclining a body to perpetual motion, why should we not believe that Nature can do it? It is the same with other shapes; one, like the square, demands perpetual rest; others, a movement sideways; others, a half-movement like palpitation. When the round, whose nature is to move, joins with the pyramidal, it perhaps makes what we call fire, because fire not only moves without resting but pierces and penetrates easily. Moreover, fire produces different effects according to the size and quantity of the angles where the round shape is joined; the fire of pepper is different from the fire of sugar, the fire of sugar from that of cinnamon, the fire of cinnamon from that of cloves, and this in turn from the fire of a faggot. Well then, fire, which is the constructor and destructor of the parts and of the whole of the Universe, gathers into an oak the quantity of shapes necessary for the composition of that oak. But, you will say, how could mere chance collect in one place all the things necessary to produce this oak? I reply that it is not extraordinary that matter so placed should make an oak, but it would have been very much more marvellous if an oak had not been formed when matter was thus disposed. Had there been a little less of certain shapes, it would have been an elm, a poplar, a willow, an elder-tree, heather or moss; a little more of certain other shapes and it would have been a sensitive plant, an oyster in a shell, a worm, a fly, a frog, a sparrow, a monkey, a man. When you throw three dice on the table and they all turn up twos; or three, four, five; or two sixes and a one; do you say: 'What a miracle! each die has turned up the same number, when so many other numbers might be turned up; what a miracle! Three dice have turned up three successive numbers; what a miracle! Two sixes and the opposite of the other six has turned up!' I am certain that a man of wit like you would not make these exclamations, for since there are only a certain quantity of numbers on the dice, it is impossible but that one of them should turn up. You are surprised that this matter, mixed up pell-mell by chance, should have built up a man, since so many things are necessary to the construction of his being. But you do not know that this matter, moving towards the design of a man, has stopped a hundred million times on the way to form sometimes a stone, sometimes lead, sometimes coral, sometimes a flower, sometimes a comet, according to the excess or deficiency of certain shapes necessary or unnecessary to compose a man. It is not marvellous that an infinite quantity of matter changing and moving continually should have met together to make the few animals, vegetables and minerals which we see, any more than it is marvellous for a royal pair to turn up in a hundred throws of the dice; and it is impossible but that something should be made from this movement. This thing will always be wondered at by a scatterbrain who will not comprehend how nearly it was not made at all. When the large river [Image] turns a mill, moves the works of a clock, and the little rivulet [Image] does nothing but run and sometimes overflow, you will not say the river has intelligence, because you know it has met with things so placed as to cause all these masterpieces. If a mill had not been placed in its path, it would not have ground the corn; if it had not met the clock it would not have marked the hours; and if the rivulet I spoke of had met the same things it would have performed the same miracles. It is the same with fire, which moves by itself; for when it found organs proper for the agitation necessary to reason, it reasoned; when it found those proper to feel only, it felt; when it found those proper to vegetation, it vegetated. And to prove this, tear out the eyes of a man who is enabled to see by this fire or this soul, and he will cease to see, just as our river will not mark the hours if the clock is destroyed.

"In fine, these first and indivisible atoms make a circle upon which the most embarrassing difficulties of physics roll without difficulty. Even the operation of the senses, which nobody yet has been able to understand, I explain very easily with these little bodies. Let us begin with sight, which, as the most incomprehensible, deserves our first attention. As I suppose, the coverings of the eye, whose openings are like those of glass, transmit the fire-dust we call visual rays, which is stopped by some opaque matter making it rebound; for this fire-dust meets on the way the image of the object which repulses it and, as this image is simply an infinite number of little bodies continually thrown off in equal superficies from the subject looked at, the image thrusts back the rays to our eyes.

"You will not fail to object to me that glass is an opaque and closely-packed body; yet instead of throwing back these other little bodies it allows them to pierce it. But I reply that the pores of glass are made in the same shape as these atoms of fire which pass through it; and just as a wheat-sieve is not fit to sift oats, nor an oat-sieve to sift wheat, so a deal box thin enough to transmit sound is not penetrable by sight and a piece of transparent crystal which allows itself to be pierced by sight is not penetrable by hearing."

I could not prevent myself from interrupting: "But how do you explain by these principles, sir, the fact that we are reflected in a mirror?"

"It is very easy", he replied, "you must suppose that the rays of our eyes pass through the glass and meet behind it a non-diaphanous body which casts them off; they return the way they came and they find spread out upon the mirror the little bodies that move in equal superficies from our own and carry them back to our eyes. Our imagination, which is hotter than the other faculties of the soul, attracts the most subtle of them, with which it makes a reduced portrait.

"The operation of hearing is no more difficult to understand. To be more succinct, let us consider it only in harmony. Suppose then a lute touched by the hands of a master of the art. You will ask me how it happens that I perceive a thing I do not see, so far from me? Do sponges go out of my ears to suck up this music and bring it to me? Or does this lute player beget in my head another little player with another little lute, who has been ordered to sing me the same airs? No. This miracle is caused by the vibrating chord striking the little bodies which compose the air and so driving them into my brain and gently piercing it with these little corporeal nothings. When the string is stretched, the sound is high, because it drives the atoms more vigorously; and the organ so penetrated gives the fantasy sufficient of them to make its picture. If there is not enough, our memory does not complete its image and we are forced to repeat the same sound to it, so that for example it may take from the materials given it by the strains of a saraband enough to complete the portrait of that saraband. But this operation is almost nothing. The wonderful thing is that by this means we are moved sometimes to joy, sometimes to rage, sometimes to pity, sometimes to reflection, sometimes to pain. This happens, I imagine, when the movement received by these little bodies meets within us other little bodies moving in the same way or, on account of their shape, capable of the same motion. The new-comers excite their hosts to move with them and so, when a violent tune meets the fire of our blood (which is disposed to the same movement) it incites this fire to thrust its way out. This is what we call the ardour of courage. If a sound is gentler and has only strength enough to raise a slighter, more wavering flame (because the matter is more volatile), it moves along the nerves, membranes and channels of our flesh and excites the tickling we call joy. The ebullition of the other passions happens in the same way according to whether the little bodies are thrown against us more or less violently, whether they receive movement by meeting other vibrations, and according to what they find to move within us.

"The demonstration of touch is not more difficult. There is a perpetual emission of little bodies from all palpable matter; the more we touch it the more they are evaporated, because we squeeze them out of the object we handle like water from a sponge when we compress it. Hard bodies report to the organ their solidity; supple bodies, their softness; the rough, their harshness; the burning, their heat; the frozen, their cold. And as a proof of this, observe that hands hardened by labour are not so sensitive in discerning by the touch, and this is because of the thickness of the callus, which is neither porous nor animated and therefore transmits with great difficulty these fumes of matter. Some will desire to know where the organ of touch resides. For my part, I think it extends over all the superficies of our mass, since it happens through the agency of our nerves; and our skin is merely an imperceptible and continuous texture of nerves. I imagine, however, that the nearer to the head the limb with which we touch, the sooner we perceive. You may make the experiment as follows: if we close our eyes and touch something with the hand we discover what it is immediately, but if on the contrary we touch it with the foot we are some time in finding out what it is. The reason for this is that our nerves, whose matter is no more compact than that of our skin (which is everywhere pitted with little holes), lose many of these little atoms on the way through the small channels of their texture before the atoms reach the brain, the end of their journey.

"It remains for me to prove that smell and taste are caused also by the agency of these same little bodies. Tell me, then, when I taste a fruit, is it not through the moisture of my mouth melting it? Admit then that since there are different salts in a pear, which by being dissolved are split up into little bodies differing in shape from those making the taste of a plum, they must pierce our palate in a different way; just as the gash made by a pike piercing me is unlike that which I endure from a pistol-bullet, and as a pistol-bullet causes me a pain different from that of a steel arrow-head.

"I have nothing to say about smell, since even your philosophers admit that it takes place through a continual emission of little bodies cast off from their mass which strike our noses as they pass.

"On this principle I will now explain to you the creation, the harmony and the influence of the celestial globes with the immutable variety of meteors."

He was about to continue when our old host entered and turned our philosopher's thoughts toward departure. He brought with him crystals filled with glow-worms to lighten the room, but these little fire-insects lose much of their light when they are not freshly gathered and as these were ten days old they hardly shone at all. My demon did not wait for the company to be inconvenienced by this; he went up to his room and returned immediately with two fire balls, so brilliant that we were all surprised he did not burn his fingers.

"These incombustible torches", said he, "will serve us better than your clusters of worms. They are sun-rays which I have purged of their heat; otherwise the corrosive qualities of its fire would have dazzled and hurt your sight. I have extracted the light and shut it in these transparent balls I am holding. This should not be a matter of great surprise to you; I was born in the Sun and so it is no more difficult for me to condense the rays which are the dust of that world than for you to collect the dust or atoms which are the pulverised earth of this world."

When we had finished praising this child of the Sun, it was late, and the young host sent his father home with the two philosophers, with a dozen balls of glow-worms hanging from his four legs. The rest of us, that is to say, the young host, my Instructor and I, went to bed by order of the Physionome. This time he put me in a room of violets and lilies and had me tickled in the usual way to send me to sleep. The next morning about nine o'clock my demon came in and told me he had just returned from the palace, whence he had been sent for by [Image], one of the Queen's waiting-women. She had inquired after me and said she still persisted in keeping her word, which is to say that she would gladly follow me if I would take her with me to the other World.

"I was greatly edified", he continued, "when I found that the principal motive for her journey was directed towards making herself a Christian. I have promised to help her design with all my ability and for this purpose to invent a machine capable of holding three or four persons, in which you can rise up together. From to-day onwards I shall apply myself seriously to the execution of this project. To amuse you during my absence here is a book which I brought from my native land. It is called _A Voyage to the Sun_. I am also giving you another, which I rate more highly, the _Great Works of the Philosophers_, composed by one of the greatest Wits of the Sun. He proves in it that all things are true and shows the way to unite physically the truths of each contradiction; for example, that white is black and black is white, that you can be and not be at the same time, that there can be a mountain without a valley, that nothing is something and that all things which exist do not exist. But notice that he proves these unheard-of paradoxes without any sophistry or captious reasoning. When you are tired of reading you can take a walk or converse with your companion, our young host. His mind has many charms; but what displeases me in him is his impiety. If he scandalizes you or shakes your faith by his reasoning do not fail to come at once and tell them to me; I will resolve the difficulties for you. Another would tell you to leave his company directly he began to philosophize on these matters, but he is extremely vain and I am certain he would take your flight for a defeat and would imagine your belief to be contrary to reason if you refused to listen to his reasons. Remember to live free."

With this phrase he left me, for in that country it is the method of leave-taking; and, in the same way, "Good day," or "Your servant, sir", is expressed by the compliment: "Sage, love me, since I love you."

He had scarcely left me when I began to examine attentively my books. The boxes, that is to say their covers, seemed to me admirable for their richness; one was carved from a single diamond incomparably more brilliant than ours, the second appeared to be a monstrous pearl cleft in two. My demon had translated these books into the language of that world; but as I have not yet spoken of their printing, I will explain the construction of these two volumes.

At the opening of the box I found something in metal almost similar to our clocks, filled with an infinite number of little springs and imperceptible machines. It is a book indeed, but a miraculous book without pages or letters; in fine, it is a book to learn from which eyes are useless, only ears are needed. When someone wishes to read he winds up the machine with a large number of all sorts of keys; then he turns the pointer towards the chapter he wishes to hear, and immediately, as if from a man's mouth or a musical instrument, this machine gives out all the distinct and different sounds which serve as the expression of speech between the noble Moon-dwellers.[48]

[Footnote 48: The likeness to a gramophone is obvious.]

When I had reflected on this miraculous invention in book-making I was no longer surprised that the young men of that country possessed more knowledge at sixteen or eighteen than grey-beards in our World. Since they know how to read as soon as they speak, they are never without reading. Indoors, out of doors, in town, travelling, on foot, or on horseback, they can have in their pocket or hanging from their saddle-bows as many as thirty of these books, and they have only to wind up a spring to hear a chapter, or several chapters, if they are in the mood to hear a whole book. In this way you have continually about you all great men, living or dead, and you hear them viva voce.

This present occupied me for more than an hour, and then hanging them upon myself like earrings I went out to walk in the town. I had not passed out of the street which ran opposite our house when towards the other end I met a large number of mournful people. Four of them carried on their shoulders a sort of coffin wrapped in black. I asked a bystander what was the meaning of this procession so similar to a funeral in my own country. He replied that the wicked [Image], whose name was expressed among the people by a blow on the right knee, had been convicted of envy and ingratitude: yesterday he had died and the Parliament had condemned him more than twenty years ago to die a natural death in his bed and to be buried after his death. I began to laugh at this reply and he asked me: "Why?"

"You surprise me", I replied, "by telling me that a long life, a peaceful death and a pompous burial which in our World are signs of benediction, serve in this as an exemplary punishment."

"What! You consider burial a mark of benediction?" retorted this man. "On your honour now, can you conceive anything more terrible than a corpse moving under swarms of worms, at the mercy of toads which gnaw its cheeks; in fine, the plague dressed in a man's body. Good God! The mere thought that even when dead my face should be wrapped in a cloth and I should have five feet of earth on my mouth makes it difficult for me to breathe! That wretch you see carried there, in addition to the infamy of being cast into a pit, was condemned to have his funeral accompanied by a hundred and fifty of his friends, and as a punishment to them for having loved a man who was envious and ungrateful they were bidden to appear at his burial with mournful faces. Had it not been for the mercy of the judges who imputed his crimes in part to his lack of intelligence, his friends would have been commanded to weep. Except for criminals every one here is burned. And this is a very decent and a very reasonable custom, for we think that fire separates the pure from the impure. Moreover, its heat draws to it by sympathy that natural heat which composed the soul and gives it the power to rise continually until it reaches some star, the earth of people more immaterial than we and more intellectual, because their temperament must correspond to and participate in the purity of the globe they inhabit. This radical flame, being rectified still more by the subtlety of that world's elements, finally composes one of the citizens of that burning country.

"However, this is not our best method of burial. When one of our philosophers comes to an age where he feels his mind grow weak and the ice of years impede the movements of his soul, he gathers his friends together for a sumptuous banquet. Then he puts before them the motives which have made him resolve to take leave of Nature, the small hope he has of being able to add anything to his good actions: they either grant him the favour, that is they order him to die, or they severely command him to live. When the majority have placed the disposition of his life in his hands, he announces the day and place to his dearest friends. They purge themselves and fast for twenty-four hours. When they come to the sage's house, they sacrifice to the Sun and enter the room where the hero awaits them lying upon a ceremonial bed. Each one in turn flies to embrace him. When it comes to his best friend, the friend kisses him tenderly, leans upon his stomach, joins mouth to mouth, and with his right hand, which he keeps free, bathes a dagger in his heart. The Lover does not remove his lips from those of his Beloved until he feels he is dead. He then withdraws the steel from his breast, places his mouth on the wound, and drinks his blood and continues to suck until he can swallow no more. Another succeeds him immediately and they carry the first to a bed; when the second is satiated he is taken away to a bed and gives place to a third. Finally, when they are all satiated, after about four or five hours, they bring to each a girl of about sixteen or seventeen. During the next three or four days they enjoy the pleasures of love and they are fed exclusively on the dead man's flesh, which they eat raw, so that if anything is born from these embraces they may be almost sure it is their friend who lives again."

I did not give this man the opportunity of discoursing further, for I left him there and continued my walk. Although I cut it short, the time I spent on the peculiarities of the sights and in visiting certain districts of the town made me arrive more than two hours after dinner was ready. They asked me why I came so late.

"It is not my fault", I replied to the cook, who was complaining of it, "several times in the street I asked what time it was, but they only answered by opening the mouth, clenching the teeth and writhing the face askew."

"What!" cried everybody, "you did not know they were telling you the time that way?"

"Faith", I replied, "they might show their great noses to the Sun all they would before I should have learnt it."

"'Tis a convenience", said they, "which permits them to dispense with a watch. With their teeth they make so exact a dial that when they wish to tell someone the time they simply open their lips and the shadow of their nose falling upon them marks the hour as if upon a dial. Now, in order that you may know why every one in this land has a large nose, learn that as soon as a woman is delivered the midwife carries the child to the Prior of the Seminary. And, at the end of a year his nose is measured before the assembly of experts by the Syndic, and if by this measure it is found too short, the child is reputed a Snub-nose and handed over to the priests, who castrate him. You will perhaps ask the reason of this barbarity and how it happens that we, among whom virginity is a crime, establish continence by force? Learn then that we act in this way from thirty centuries of observation showing that a large nose is a sign over our door that says, 'Here lodges a witty, prudent, courteous, affable, generous and liberal man', and that a small nose is the sign-post of the opposite vices. That is why we make eunuchs of our snub-nosed children, for the Republic prefers to have no children from them than children like them."